Kim Pallister (oh, hey, yet another Microsoft colleague that went to Intel), wrote a nice commentary a few days ago on the marketing of indie games on XBLA, referencing the postmortem of Go Go Break Steady as a lesson about how marketing is so critical to the success of a game. I'm not really talking about traditional marketing here, but am instead suggesting that word-of-mouth style marketing won't merely be optional, but will become your #1 priority when it comes to XNA Community Games. The warning here is that you, as a Community Games Publisher, must be ready to launch promotions of your game to as many places as possible that will reach your target audience (hint: not a silly "teaser spot" on the Xbox that you might pay for Microsoft to promote). However, I'm not telling you to spam places like Kotaku or 1up either (Brian Crescente would kill me if that happened). Rather, you need to think through the kind of audience and message you want consumers to "get" about your game, then work with people that are experienced enough to help you market that game effectively, long before the game hits the Community Games Channel on the Xbox.

What does this mean in the end? If you want your game to have big returns, you need to be prepared to have smart people help you promote the game.

I dont think that "Go Go Break Steady" is a particularly good example of why marketing is essential to a games success.

I mean the game is 100% complete and utter crap, no amount of marketing can take that away! If the game was excellent but didnt sell because nobody knew about it, then yeah - I could see where they were coming from.